1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the transportation, handling and storage of hazardous wastes and other hazardous materials. More specifically, the present invention is concerned with a trailer which is adapted for transporting a containment unit for handling, distribution, storing and transporting hazardous materials.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The handling, storage and transport of hazardous materials, and particularly hazardous waste has become a problem of major proportions. Increased emphasis is being placed on the importance of assuring that solvents, lubricants, paint related products, and the like are stored and transported with adequate safeguards. Increasingly, it is being recognized that even small spills and relatively minor leakages of the growing number of substances that are being referred to by the term "hazardous material" can detrimentally affect persons, property, plants, animals, ground water and other aspects of ecology and the environment. Moreover, in view of increasing concern about the lasting nature of the adverse effects that can result from spills and unchecked leakage of hazardous materials, the issue of transportation, storage and distribution of hazardous materials is receiving increasing attention by law-makers, by government regulatory agencies, and by those who have been elected to govern and to enforce the laws and regulations relating to hazardous materials.
In the past, the standard form of container for the handling, storage and transportation of hazardous materials has been the 55 gallon steel drum. In transportation of hazardous materials using 55 gallon steel drums on the highways, especially at high speeds, the drums are easily ruptured if an accident occurs. A high impact against a gang of the drums in a truck accident at, for example, fifty five miles per hour, can cause a sort of domino effect wherein sufficient impact is transferred to a great number of the drums to rupture the drums. This is due to the basic cylindrical shape of the drum as well as its relatively thin walled construction.
During transportation of the drums, for example, from the site where the hazardous materials are being used to a permanent storage facility another hazard may occur when full drums are stacked which they frequently are because their shape clearly lends itself to stacking. In many instances the drums are stacked eight or nine tiers high. These drums often leak, with the leaking chemicals flowing down to mix with other chemicals below. In this situation, even if the individual chemicals are not in themselves particularly hazardous, an unknown and hazardous combination may result.
For these and other reasons, there remains a very genuine and real need for a well designed, heavy duty containment facility and a further need for an apparatus to transport the containment facility that appropriately will address today's increasing concern for the way in which hazardous materials are handled, transported and stored.
U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 08/342,451, filed Nov. 14, 1994, to Norman S. Van Valkenburgh et al addresses the first of these needs by providing a modular containment structure which allows for the safe transportation, storing and handling of containers of hazardous materials.
However, there is still a need for a trailer adapted to support and thereby allow for the safe transportation of the modular containment structure of U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 08/342,451 over the highways at speeds up to approximately fifty five miles per hour.